


beats too slowly (without you)

by sapphosghost



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 12:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphosghost/pseuds/sapphosghost





	beats too slowly (without you)

The tall grass has gone from a lustrous, healthy green to dried, dead brown since the last time she was here. Six months ago, when it was still warm and she could shuttle her children off to summer day camp at the Episcopal church and make long drive out. Now, in the cold, overcast autumn afternoon, everything looks different. Feels different. The once lush dirt has faded from deep, rich browns to decaying grays. The trees are barren, the birds having abandoned them for more fruitful homes further south. Even the little cabin at her back, usually used by local hunters during poor weather, has fallen into disarray. She looks through the broken window, remembers how warm it had been inside. How their hands had brushed, knuckle against heel, when they’d both reached at the same time to open that window, to let in the air. How Beth had blushed and jerked away.

Now, the hard, dry earth beneath her boots crunches thinly as she paces, just trying to take up space. There are no buildings, no people, for miles, and it makes her feel emptier than she already is. Just the cabin and its memories. She flinches as a shot rips through the still autumn sky. Another, another another. All miss their target, and she sighs. She doesn’t want to be doing this, but Beth would tell her to stop whining. It’s not like she was a marksman when she first started, either.

“Again,” she commands. “Reload.”

Sarah pushes aside the earmuffs and arches an eyebrow, a silent signal that she hadn’t heard what Alison had said. Alison holds out a new magazine at the tips of her fingers, standing as far away possible and extending her arm to hand it to Sarah, who snatches it with a roll of her eyes.

Alison watches as Sarah struggles to remove the spent mag and replace it with the full one. She’s moderately afraid this woman is going to shoot herself in the foot or, worse, shoot Alison herself. She keeps her distance, back rigid and arms crossed over her chest defensively, but attentive to the hands that fumble with the pistol that didn’t even belong to her.

It’s Beth’s gun, really. Beth’s car, Beth’s clothes, Beth’s life. Except Beth is dead, and this woman, this failing imposter, has taken her place. And somehow it’s fallen to Alison to help her become Beth even more than she already has. As though she could ever replace her.

“You have to hit the magazine release, just below the trigger guard.”

Sarah stops fumbling and flips the gun upside down to inspect it, and Alison sucks in her breath, pressing her palm hard against her sternum, anxious. Sarah finds the release and presses against it, popping the magazine up. She flips the gun once more and lets it fall to the ground. She slides the fresh one into the well, banging it roughly into place on the palm of her hand the way they do on cop shows and in bad movies. She stands in a way that is exactly opposite of how Alison had told her, aims, and fires.

And misses.

She resets herself and aims again, but Alison has turned away. The rest of the shots are muffled by her own headset, but she can still hear faint curses and the distinct sound of silence as none of the shots hit their mark.

Alison takes a long breath in through her nose, her arms straight down at her sides, hands clenching and opening. Patience has never been her strong suit, and this exercise is testing the limits of her capacity for it. One might assume that a decade-long relationship and two children would have taught her something about it by now, but all she knows is that when she feels like she’s reaching the end of her rope, taking the edge off is the only way she knows how to cope. Beth would have understood.

Beth would have done a lot of things differently, in this situation. Beth would have been able to do the background checks, make sure this woman was who she said she was. Beth would have been able to calm her down when Sarah tried Alison’s patience, or brought her gangly, backwater brother to her home and parked on her street, where her neighbors could see. She would have protected all of them from this woman, until she knew for sure Sarah could be trusted. And then she would have taught her how to shoot, and sent her packing back Downtown. Gotten her out of sight, out of mind.

But Beth is dead. And she still doesn’t understand why.

Donnie doesn’t notice when she disappears into the bathroom to cry. He’s too preoccupied with the fact that things seems to have returned to normal (although “normal” is probably a relative term) for them to see that she’s upset more often than not. She doesn’t stay out late anymore, dropping the kids off with her mother and disappearing with the minivan. She doesn’t just not come home. He doesn’t ask, really. Just casual mentions of, “I’m glad you’re home tonight. The kids have missed your cooking.” Little things to let her know he saw what was going on, but isn’t going to make it an issue unless it persists. As long as she’s in the house, it doesn’t seem to matter that she’s miserable. It never really has.

She knows she’s been drinking more. The wine bottles pile up before they’re collected every Tuesday. She knows she’s been overmedicating, because the bottle that had been full the week before Beth’s…accident is now nearly empty, and she can’t bear to refill it knowing the look her pharmacist is going to give her, or the thought of it somehow getting back to Aynsley. Most of all, she knows she’s not coping well, because she hasn’t been able to say Beth’s name aloud—or in her head, for that matter—without her chest tightening so violently that it brings her to her knees.

Sarah grunts in frustration and fumbles once again with the pistol. Beth’s pistol. Alison turns and watches her. Sarah’s gloved hands inexpertly search for a grip that feels natural, and Alison remembers the first time she’d held that gun. Beth had put it in her hand unloaded and said, “Don’t ever point this at someone unless you know you’re capable of killing them.” It had been so heavy in her hand, so cold, this terrifying thing that could take a life so quickly. Beth’s words had only made her more frightened, thinking herself incapable of such a thing. But Beth came around behind her, holding up Alison’s arms with her own to show her how to stand, how to aim, how to fire, and the roiling nerves in her belly had melted. They were the same—genetic identicals—but Beth had felt so much stronger than she, with her stomach pressed against Alison’s back, her hands on Alison’s wrists, her breath in Alison’s ear. Anyone else in that position would have caused Alison to withdraw, pulling away uncomfortably. But this was Beth. Just Beth.

She’d gotten her own gun, the more compact revolver she carried in her purse, and Beth had taken back the pistol. That gun now rests in Sarah’s hands, shots firing everywhere but where they’re intended to go. And Alison is suddenly so very angry at this person who walked in wearing someone else’s shoes, expecting that it would be easy to fool everyone. Easy to become someone like Beth, who is more than just her accent and her ability to hit a target.

“Okay,” she says, stepping closer, her breathing controlled and her jaw set. “Reload, try again.” She puts her hands on Sarah’s, the way Beth had once put her hands on Alison’s, feeling Sarah’s energy radiate. It’s the same feeling Alison had always gotten from Beth. She stiffens, and hates herself for allowing a comparison of the two. Beth against this superficial knock-off.

“So, most city cops carry glocks, but a Walther P99, it has an optional sized hand grip. It’s good for women, Beth said.” A beat, tasting the familiar name on her tongue again, feeling the constriction in her chest. But this is not something she can share with Sarah. Something she can’t trust her—or anyone—with. “Particularly women living their lives like rats in a lab.”

“Is that what you think?” Sarah asks, a genuine curiosity in her voice. She’s still new to this, and Alison knows she should be kind, but she finds it hard to do so. Not while Sarah is wearing Beth’s coat.

“Well what else could it be?” She’s curt, continually reaching for her hair in some nervous tic, eyes flicking left and right to make doubly sure there’s no one else around who might hear her.  “Someone is covering up their illegal experiments by wiping us out.” While we wipe ourselves out at the same time, she thinks, making their job a little easier. “Well whatever it is, I need to protect my family. So Beth taught me how to shoot. For that I am grateful to her.”

And for so many other things. But how could she ever explain that? The others would never understand.

“I’m sorry you lost her. But anything you tell me about her would help.”

Help? Help Sarah continue to pretend to be someone she’s not, continue living this lie, this lie that she could ever be as good as Beth was at what she did? Alison is offended at the notion. “I fail to see how someone like you could fill Beth’s shoes.”

Sarah almost winces, but Alison knows she’s stronger than that. Strong like Beth, which is the only reason she’s out here right now. Because even though there’s nothing else about Sarah that is capable of being Beth, she has that same strength and Alison respects that. But it doesn’t mean she could ever tell her how Beth was when they were together, alone. Sarah doesn’t deserve to know that side of the woman whose skin she’s wearing. No, she’ll get the superficial version. The version Beth gave everyone else. Everyone but Alison.

“The truth is I barely knew Beth.” Lies. “She was all business, but I admired her. She didn’t pry, she was discreet, she didn’t bring her foster brother to my house.” She veers the conversation away from Beth, back to Sarah. It hurts too much to talk about her like she’s really gone, and so much easier to pick and needle at Sarah.

Which Sarah is keenly aware of, when she sets her shoulders back and stands defensively. “I didn’t know the rules of clone club, did I?”

Breath sucks in through her teeth, a cat’s hiss in reverse with the same amount of malice. “Can you not use the ‘c’ word? Please?”

Sarah snorts and rolls her eyes, and turns back to her target. Three shots are popped off, glass shattering and the stuffed animal on the center post exploding in a cloud of cotton fluff.

“Shit,” Sarah says, surprised even with herself.

And Alison thinks that she might be a little like Beth after all, in every way except one: she’ll never actually  _be_  the woman that Alison loved. She’s just a poor copy. A genetic identical.

A clone.


End file.
